I wrote this article a while back for a local magazine, and I thought it would be good to post on our own website! Here it is:
When we go grocery shopping, many of us have learned to make choices that are both healthier for the planet and healthier for our bodies. We look for organic, locally grown produce, non toxic cleaners, and paper products made with recycled materials. But how many of us realize that we can apply these same sorts of good consumer choices when we’re shopping for our pets?
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There’s a new nest, high up in the planter closest to our door. This one is cute, with 2 branches sewn together in an X. Lots of spider webs on this one – the last one was lots of lichen. Eggs laid Wed and Thurs (April 21 and 22 – Happy Earth Day!!!)
I wrote this up a while back for a nutrition lecture I was giving, and I thought it might be useful to post it somewhere for more people to use. These are some of our favorite resources for people to use when trying to educate themselves about their pets.
- Christine
Resources:
Excellent Link for Dog Nutrition (though cat folks can definitely glean some knowledge here too: www.dogaware.com The woman who compiles this site has encyclopedic knowledge about diet and nutrition for dogs and writes a lot of the food articles in The Whole Dog Journal.
Key links on her site that might be useful to you:
Lots of links to common health problems in dogs
http://www.dogaware.com/specific.html
including a ton of info on kidney disease and diet, specifically a lot about protein and its relationship to kidney disease: http://www.dogaware.com/kidney.html#protein
there are a lot of good articles that she wrote for Whole Dog Journal on home cooking: http://www.dogaware.com/diet/homemade.html
Sites online specifically for cats:
Holisticat (includes an email list)
CatNutrition.org: feeding cats for health
Making Cat Food (from a vet) great site all around with some good tips about transitioning a picky cat’s diet
How to Prepare Fresh Cat Food (technical but very complete)
The Feline Future Cat Food Company (Instincts TC) – a mix to which you add your own meat. I don’t carry it but it seems great. Good answers to peoples’ questions on this site about raw foods. (more…)
The new building is at 4327 NE Fremont St.
Our last expansion in our current space was opened 2 years ago this May, and already we have outgrown it! Thanks to you, our food business has increased to the point that we’re having trouble keeping enough in stock to make it to the next week’s delivery. Combine this with the challenge we’ve always had with visibility on this street (we get calls from people who are driving back and forth on the street and can’t find us, and people to this day come in and say they live right down the street and never knew we were here). So, we stumbled across a unique opportunity just two blocks down the street, which is lucky, as there really aren’t any spaces larger than what we already have in our neighborhood. I was in Blackbird Wine talking to Andy, and I mentioned that I wished that his old space (his store used to be on the side of the building and he has recently moved up front) was next to the space that’s been vacant in that building for so long, as we’d love to put them together to make one big store. That’s when he said, “I think both of those spaces share a wall”. So, we looked into it, and lo and behold, our bigger store became a possibility. It will be a big L-shaped store, with the main entrance right on Fremont St. The side entrance will become our food delivery bay, where deliveries can be made right into our back room! (that may be more exciting to us and our truck drivers than it is for you, but it will be a big help for us to have it set up that way). Parking is definitely a lot better down there too.
So now we face another big build-out from scratch, starting in April and hopefully resulting in a move on July 4th weekend. It will come just in time for us to celebrate Green Dog’s 6 year anniversary. We’re going to try and make it look as much like our old space as possible, which means as the time draws nearer, we might be dismantling some of this store to use in the new one. Hopefully we can make a smooth transition without it looking too ransacked in here. The whole thing is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. Wish us luck!
The Work Has Begun!!
Before Shot inside the new space - that wall in back is coming out soon
Looking out towards the street in the new space
This is the wall in the back that will have an archway into the other space, where the food room will be
Go Alan Go! Our contractor breaks into the wall that will join the main store space with the food room
